Hello loves, and Merry Christmas Eve!
Gingerbread houses are one of those festive treats that are essential in my house at this time of year.
I would say my baking skills are quite average to slightly higher at best, and I have constructed many houses from the pre made kits over the last couple of years which were super fun but still quite difficult. So I thought, why dip my toe in the water again when I could dive head first into a scorching pool of piranha infested rapids?
This year, I decided to make an entire gingerbread house from scratch. Yes, you heard correctly.
But of course, I couldn’t do it alone, so I enlisted the help of our good old friend, Miss Zoë T!
As you will have seen in the video, I baked all of the gingerbread a couple of hours before we began constructing it so that it would have plenty of time to cool. And this, my friend, is where you will find the instructions so that you can give this a go as well.
Disclaimer: I am NOT a professional. My tips are useless and you probably shouldn’t take them seriously.
As for the recipe, there’s absolutely no way I came up with this myself. I essentially combined two recipes to create my house.
The gingerbread recipe came from the very talented Ann Reardon in collaboration with Food Thinkers by Breville. For actual instructions and measurements (since mine won’t make sense), click here. In this recipe, Ann used an amazing mould for her house, but since I couldn’t get my hands on one, I had to find the dimensions on my own- so I used the handy instructions provided by Tesco’s Real Food website which you can find here.
To my knowledge, this recipe can be made 100% vegan, all you’ll have to do is switch out the regular butter to your preferred vegan substitute. You’ll just have to watch out for the golden syrup and sugar, as in some places the sugar it’s made from can be processed with things that are most definitely not vegan so be sure to check that out beforehand. The only real issue is the icing and the decorative elements, but I’m sure there are plenty of alternatives for you on the market.
For the gingerbread, you will need lightly salted butter, soft brown sugar, golden syrup, ground ginger, ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, ground cloves, and plain flour. Once again, all of the measurements can be found on the Food Thinkers website linked above.
But before you start, make sure you preheat your oven!
As for utensils, baking gingerbread is pretty basic and you could totally do it with a wooden spoon and a little bit of man (or woman) power. However, I do find that the consistency is a little better when I use an electric mixer and if you’re an expert lazy person like I am, using one of these with a flex edge beater means you literally just chuck the ingredients in and it’s all done for you. I still like to scrape the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula though, as many of you KitchenAid users out there will know, sneaky sugar crystals and flour pockets like to pool around the little dome in the bottom.
When making gingerbread (with this recipe anyway) you are essentially mixing in two steps- mix your wet ingredients together and then add the dry ones.
So to start out I added the brown sugar, golden syrup and butter and beat them until they were JUST combined nicely.
But the most important point I can make is that unless you’re an incredibly experienced baker, ALWAYS measure your ingredients with a scale to make sure the ratios are correct.
Once you add your dry ingredients (flour and spices), it wont take a great deal of mixing at all to get the gingerbread dough to form. Be sure to avoid over working it, as it will become extremely thick and tough, or on the dry side which is not what you want.
Once the dough had formed I took it out of the bowl and squashed it down slightly on a floured bench before cutting it into a couple of portions ready to create the foundations for a strong house.
The texture in the photograph above is just want you want when you cut into it- it should basically look like thick bread, but should feel soft and light rather than thick and doughy.
Before I began, I drew up the template with Tesco’s dimensions (linked above) on paper with a ruler and pencil before cutting them out. You will need to get these measurements PERFECT for the house to stand so make sure you take your time with it to avoid the house not fitting together correctly. If you don’t feel confident doing this, there are plenty of templates online that you can easily print out.
I then simply rolled out the dough to about 1/2 a centimetre, floured the paper and sat it on top before cutting it out with a super sharp knife.
Perhaps my biggest tip from this whole thing, is to roll out the dough and cut it out on the tray that you will be cooking them on, as the pieces are so big and fragile that they fall out of shape once you touch them, thus compromising the integrity of your construction.
Before cooking the gingerbread, make sure that you have six pieces. Two for the roof, two walls, a front and a back. If you want to cut out windows or a door, you need to do this before cooking as well.
I then placed them in a preheated oven for about twenty minutes or until they were golden brown. A couple got slightly crispy on the edges, but it was nothing of concern.
Once they came out of the oven, they took about an hour to fully cool but I left it for two to be absolutely sure. If you try to assemble the house before it’s cool, it will either snap in half, or fall over as the heat melts and separates the icing.
Speaking of icing, the next step was to create royal icing which is made from icing sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice. The recipe we used to create this can be found on Taste’s website; here.
It’s incredibly easy and quick to make and the great thing about it is that it sets rock hard extremely quickly, making it the perfect glue to hold up a house.
And then came the assembly! There is absolutely no way I can possibly explain this in words, but as you can see in the video, it’s quite fiddly and difficult to do- you basically just have to wing it and see what works.
But my biggest tip when it comes to assembly is to take the instructions seriously when they say to leave the house to set for at least half an hour before putting on the roof, and another half before you decorate it. If you try to do it all at once, there is absolutely no way it’s going to stay up.
And finally, we got to the fun part- the decorating!
I didn’t have much of a plan or any kind of vision when it came to decorating, I basically just bought lots of sweets and prayed for the best but I’m super proud of how it turned out thanks to Zoë’s helpful hands and eyes.
We used a mixture of musk sticks to create panelling, chocolate freckles/sparkles for the roof tiles, Christmas mix gardens, royal icing snow, raspberry and M&M accents and candy cane columns. It’s really just trial and error when it comes to this, so get in Buddy the Elf mode and just get crazy with the four major food groups; candy, candy canes, candy corn and SYRUP!
I hope you enjoyed our shenanigans and/or found this helpful in some way.
Whether this brings back memories of your childhood Christmases or put a smile on your face during a hard time, I’m happy to have made you feel even the slightest bit more festive this season.
Please stay safe this Christmas, and remember that love and kindness are the most important gifts you can give.
Merry Christmas,
Claire and Zoë x
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